Is there anyway this is just dependence and not an addiction

[Rylan52]

I’m severely chronically sick and am persribed 2mg of IV dilaudid everyone 3hrs and since I’ve been on it for a long time my tolerance has gone up and it honestly doesn’t help that much but with the severity of the pain im in 24/7 I’ll taks any bit of relief I can get and IV dilaudid is the ONLY thing that works. So after surgeries they up the dose to 4mg while I’m in the hospital so since I’m able to take that much whenever I’m having an extra hard day with pain I take 4mg and most of the time I just skip a dose at night to make up for it but more recently things have been worse so much so my primary told me he could put me on hospice even though he isn’t expecting me to pass within 6 momths which is usually the way it works but you can actually still go on it even if they don’t know for sure how much longer they expect you to live since I do have a life threatening illness that will take my life unless something else does before it kills me but I’m not sure if all the requirements you need and how they do it I didn’t ask cuz I’m not ready to take that step. So here’s where there’s some concern I’ve gotten addicted, I’m 23 but I live with my parents because I’m pretty much bedbound and can’t take care of myself and they lock up the dilaudid and there’s been times that I’ve picked the lock to get more out of desperation because sometimes I just can’t cope with the severe pain I’m in. I’m not taking it to get high or for a rush so I don’t really think I’m addicted but since I’ve been caught my parents are starting to think I do. I know it’s not right and I know this would be considered an addictive behavior but given the circumstances do you think I have an addiction? Also I wouldn’t be afraid to admit I’m addicted if I am I took the medication as prescribed in the beginning so I didn’t choose to do drugs and I also know addiction is a disease I lost my brother in December due to a heroin dose after he relapsed which I think is also why my parents are so worried they don’t want to have another kid die from an addiction. And I know no one here can say 100% for sure if I have an addiction or not I just want some opinions from people who do have an addiction. Thanks in advance.

 

[nuttynutskin]

If I'm not mistaken addiction is if you're taking it for psychological effects. If you want more of something because you're in extreme pain then I don't think that's the same thing. I could be wrong tho.

 

[Painful One]

I don’t think that is considered addiction.
I‘m pretty much in the same boat as you and I consider it dependence and severe pain due to disease.

It sucks that this “opiate epidemic” thing has made people who really need this medication feel like addicts and appear as addicts in other people’s opinions. We don’t need family making us feel any worse.

You are doing just fine. Keep on keeping on.

 

[Lucy20]

Your body is dependent on it after taking a while but you are not an addict. You would be taking them for the high if you were. Have you tried adding kratom? Cbd oil has helped and thc edibles
But please don't think you are a junkie like i was, you would have your jewelry pawned for heroin or pills if you were

 

[tweakerguy]

Not making any assumptions on your character, or labeling you, but addiction covers more than just psychological effects. You most likely are addicted to the meds, physically.
If you were to stop cold turkey im willing to bet the the withdrawls would be terrible to put it mildly. ThatThat's addiction.

 

[ghostandthedarknes]

Not making any assumptions on your character, or labeling you, but addiction covers more than just psychological effects. You most likely are addicted to the meds, physically.
If you were to stop cold turkey im willing to bet the the withdrawls would be terrible to put it mildly. ThatThat's addiction.

That's drug dependence.

 

[Phoenix_rising]

Does it matter if you're addicted to opiate painkillers? You're in pain and have a terminal illness. It sounds like your parents are worried that you'll overdose,but surely if you're open with them of how much pain you're in then surely they'd give it to you?

Tell your care team or provider that the pain relief isn't enough anymore and they will up the dose or change to a more powerful opiate.

I hope you are able to manage your pain and wish the outcome of your situation to improve. All the best.

Peace out and shine on
Phoenix

 

[nuttynutskin]

Does it matter if you're addicted to opiate painkillers? You're in pain and have a terminal illness.

Exactly

 

[JamesB1985]

My opinion is your not really exhibiting addictive behaviors after hearing your explanations behind your behavior. Good luck. Stay strong.

 

[sekio]

If you've been on multiple-doses-a-day IV Dilaudid for a long time I'd be suprised if you weren't dependent. Anyone would be in that situation.

In my mind, addiction is when someone makes major life changes to feed a drug habit, or dedicates a lot of their time to getting and staying high for the same of being high. It's a mental process, not a physiological one. You can get addicted to food, gambling, sex, anything pleasurable.

Dependence is when someone is exposed to a drug on a regular basis and their body changes to adapt to the presence of said drug. It is not a mental process but a physiological one. Many drugs produce dependency, hell even nasal decongestants can if over used. Laxatives can. Steroids can. Stimulants can, alcohol, benzos, opioids all can too.

It sounds to me like you are dependent but not addicted.

 

[Asteroid Annie]

I’m severely chronically sick and am persribed 2mg of IV dilaudid everyone 3hrs and since I’ve been on it for a long time my tolerance has gone up and it honestly doesn’t help that much but with the severity of the pain im in 24/7 I’ll taks any bit of relief I can get and IV dilaudid is the ONLY thing that works. So after surgeries they up the dose to 4mg while I’m in the hospital so since I’m able to take that much whenever I’m having an extra hard day with pain I take 4mg and most of the time I just skip a dose at night to make up for it but more recently things have been worse so much so my primary told me he could put me on hospice even though he isn’t expecting me to pass within 6 momths which is usually the way it works but you can actually still go on it even if they don’t know for sure how much longer they expect you to live since I do have a life threatening illness that will take my life unless something else does before it kills me but I’m not sure if all the requirements you need and how they do it I didn’t ask cuz I’m not ready to take that step. So here’s where there’s some concern I’ve gotten addicted, I’m 23 but I live with my parents because I’m pretty much bedbound and can’t take care of myself and they lock up the dilaudid and there’s been times that I’ve picked the lock to get more out of desperation because sometimes I just can’t cope with the severe pain I’m in. I’m not taking it to get high or for a rush so I don’t really think I’m addicted but since I’ve been caught my parents are starting to think I do. I know it’s not right and I know this would be considered an addictive behavior but given the circumstances do you think I have an addiction? Also I wouldn’t be afraid to admit I’m addicted if I am I took the medication as prescribed in the beginning so I didn’t choose to do drugs and I also know addiction is a disease I lost my brother in December due to a heroin dose after he relapsed which I think is also why my parents are so worried they don’t want to have another kid die from an addiction. And I know no one here can say 100% for sure if I have an addiction or not I just want some opinions from people who do have an addiction. Thanks in advance.

If you can honestly say, that your quality of life is better with the dope..... I'd say you're not an addict... Yet.

 

[negrogesic]

Sounds like dependence/tolerance, but frankly I don't think it matters much in your case.

What's the nature of the illness if you don't mind me asking?

 

[BeachBum4u]

Not making any assumptions on your character, or labeling you, but addiction covers more than just psychological effects. You most likely are addicted to the meds, physically.
If you were to stop cold turkey im willing to bet the the withdrawls would be terrible to put it mildly. ThatThat's addiction.

That's absolutely incorrect! There is a distinct difference between addiction and dependence. I'd reckon to say a good portion of H users are "likely" addicts, however there are numerous opiate users who due to pain issues become dependant on their meds. Just because one would face withdrawals if they were to stop suddenly, doesn't make them an addict. Hell, by your definition diabetics are addicts to insulin, heck they'd even die if they were to stop taking their meds. Come on man, this isn't the caveman age!

 

[Zonxx]

I don’t think that is considered addiction.
I‘m pretty much in the same boat as you and I consider it dependence and severe pain due to disease.

It sucks that this “opiate epidemic” thing has made people who really need this medication feel like addicts and appear as addicts in other people’s opinions. We don’t need family making us feel any worse.

You are doing just fine. Keep on keeping on.
❤

this ^ Take as much as you feel necessary pain is pain, and if you're not even sure what the future holds, why would you spend it in pain when you could otherwise not.

 

[Rylan52]

Thank you everyone this makes me feel a lot better. Today I told my mom about all the answers I received and told her there was only 1 person who said I was addicted but that person didn’t understand that there’s a difference between dependence and addiction and just cuz you withdrawal doesn’t mean you’re are addicted, I know so many people who get dependent even if they only took it for a few days to a week and when they weaned off they had withdrawal but were in no way addicted just dependent which anyone who takes opioids for an extended period of time will become dependent on them and not just opioids but thousands and thousands of other medications just like what one person mentioned above people with diabetes are dependent on it and experience withdrawal without it. Anyways my mom just doesn’t understand she said she 100% believes me when I say I’m taking it because of pain and not to get high and she understands there’s a huge difference in dependence and addiction but she doesn’t think I’m just dependent on it she still thinks since I take more than prescribed and have picked locks to get it that means I’m addicted and I told her I completely understand why she would think that because yeah picking a lock to get more is definitely an addictive behavior but given the circumstances I dont think I have an addiction I’m just really really desperate and when you’re in that state you don’t think about consequences or how wrong it is and if you do you honestly don’t care because you’re so desperate you would do anything and I told her she won’t ever understand she can’t because she doesn’t live every second of everyday in severe pain and she told me if you think that then tell your doctor and see what she says they deal with pain everyday and if they say this behavior is normal then okay but I’m terrified to say anything in fear they’ll take it away and if they did I honestly don’t know if I would be able to cope with this life anymore I already have those thoughts I’m not going to act on them cuz I couldn’t do that to my family especially after the year we’ve had my brother died of a heroin overdose because he relapsed and I guess he didn’t realize how low his tolerance was, I lost my aunt to esophageal cancer and I lost another aunt from organ failure they don’t know for sure cuz there were multiple organs that failed but she might of had a heart attack and they believe it was caused by the drugs she took. Also I think having my brother and my aunt, her sister die from drugs makes her even more worried about it cuz she doesn’t want to lose me too but I’ve tried to explain that I’m never taking more than I would be prescribed in the hospital after surgery and with my tolerance it honestly isn’t a lot and I truly believe she doesn’t have to worry about me overdosing.
Anyways thank you all so much you made me feel a lot better and maybe my mom will come around and at least somewhat understand that this isn’t an addiction.
Oh and I did wanna say some of y’all said even if I was addicted why would it matter since I have a terminal illness but we don’t know when I’ll die I mean yes it could happen at anytime I’ve been extremely close multiple times and I actually did technically die due to a abdominal aneurysm cause extreme internal bleeding and the stupid doctors and nurse didn’t catch it until way way too late. My mom kept raising concerns about the state I was in saying she didn’t feel like this could just me having a hard recovery from brain surgery and she felt like something was wrong that they were missing but even with her saying that when they got a blood test back saying I had a 5 point something hemiglobin they thought it was for sure wrong so they were having it redone but before they got the results I stared “fading” going in and out of consciousness and my color went from being extremely pale to getting dusky and grey and slightly blue and my mom says she felt like she was watching me die so she ran out of my room and yelled for help and at that moment my neurosurgeon happened to be getting off the elevator which is a miracle because he was able to yell for them to hold the elevator and within seconds they were calling a code and yelling for someone to run as fast as they could to get blood and meet us in the ambulance bay and told a nurse to call for a helicopter and have them land on the football field across the street (they didn’t have a helipad cuz it was a smaller hospital) and btw I remember a lot of what I’m telling y’all which I should not have any memory of it but anyways they had me in the ambulance bay strapped to a backboard waiting for the helicopter to land and then they would run me over there so in the meantime they were just trying to save me because at that point I actually should of already been dead I had a 2.3 hemoglobin which is said to be medically impossible for your heart to beat with that little of blood in your body much less survive it so my neurosurgeon was yelling at them to squeeze the blood quicker and the rapid response nurse waa yelling at me not to move and not to try to talk and while this is going on I’m going from being able to see what was happening but it was blurry and then I would go to being able to see myself laying there unconscious and lifeless being worked on from outside my body in those moments outside my body I was dead and at first no one really believed me they said it was my brain making those memories of what I saw because of hearing people talk about it but the more I told them about they realized there was stuff I saw that no one spoke about and I was able to describe the moment my dad arrived at the hospital after having to get on the next flight there before he was even able to make it all the way home cuz he had left to go back home that day (I was in a hospital in Maryland and I’m from Texas I have a really complex rare disease so I have to travel for a lot of my surgeries and medical care) and I described how I saw my mom just collapse into my dads arm and just sob because at that point everyone was just waiting for me to die because even though the plan was to do surgery to find the bleed and try and stop it (there was so much blood none of my organs were visable so no one knew where I was bleeding but when I arrived at the children’s hospital in war flown to in DC they realized it was too late there was no chance I would survive surgery so they just put me on life support and told my mom my dad needed to get on the next flight out because I wouldn’t survive the night but I did and I turned a corner I was still very critical and unstable but I started to show signs that the bleeding either slowed or stoped and there was a little glimpse of hope that I would survive and obviously I did it was truly a miracle no one could explain how it was even possible for me to of been alive when all the chaos first started to unfold or how the bleeding could of just stopped on it’s own. Everyday when the doctors did rounds my room would be compelled fool like seriously everyone was touching shoulders that’s how many students, residents and other doctors were in the room because everyone was so shocked about what happened it’s crazy and definitely strengthen my faith in God and actually made some of my friends start to believe in God. And a year or so later I was at the same hospital for another surgery and I was actually only a few rooms down from the room I was in when this happened and one day somehow that incident got brought up in coversation with my nurse and she just burst into tears and said she had no idea that’s who I was she said she was supposed to be my nurse that night and she had just gotten there and walked past my room and when she saw me she thought I had died so she went and told my current nurse and before she could finish telling her my mom was yelling down the hall for help and she said she had thought about me a lot since that night and had tried to figure out what had happened and if I survived but no one she asked knew and she said she thought I more than likely didn’t make it and she said in all her career she has never seen someone that close to dying and survive. I actually have medical induced PTSD which there’s some other incidents that play into it but this incident is the root of my PTSD issues and I can no longer have some simple procedures done awake because I have such bad and very real flashbacks where it’s like I’m experiencing it all over again and I end up shaking and crying and hyperventalating and it’s hard to them to get me to realize what’s actually going on at the moment and that I’m not experiencing what I’m seeing and feel like I am and I’ll be completely inconsolable for a period of time and I also sometimes get that way when I wake up from surgery and what scares me is I’ve heard my parents say I remember a lot more than I should and I remember a lot of the bad stuff that they wish I didn’t remember but there’s still stuff that they thank God I don’t remember and I tried to get them to tell me but they won’t they said I wouldn’t wanna know. Anyways sorry I got way way off topic I just had to share that whole experience since I brought it up so even though I could die at any moment I could also still live for a long time we just don’t know so its not really the same as like terminal cancer where you technically don’t know when you’ll die but the doctors are able to kinda tell you around how much longer they expect you’ll live, and also some mentioned telling my doctors the dose I’m on isn’t cutting it but I already know they won’t go up cuz of the laws we’ve sort of talked about it before they already get nervous just having me on IV they did try and give me some other oral opiods but I have absorption issues so they don’t do anything and I also have a gene defect that effects the way I process different medication like some stuff I don’t process at all, some I process to quickly, some too slowly, and others build up in my system so it’s they cause an overdose eventually which I had serotonin syndrome because of this before we knew I had the defect so because of that unfortunately we haven’t found anything other than IV dilaudid that works like fentanyl which is stronger than dilaudid does absolutely nothing if they pushed saline instead I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
Oh and yes I’ve tried kratom and I use marijuana I usually smoke it because I live in Texas so I can’t just get edibles whenever I like but I have tried edibles as well and unfortunately it doesn’t help my chronic pain at all but when I have like cramps when I’m on my period or other “normal” pain from other things it sometimes helps I’m using it for nausea and to give me an appetite because I often have zero appetite and it’s hard for me to force myself to eat which I have to do or I get all shaky and I also go through periods of time where I’m throwing up a lot for no real reason and during those times when I take my dilaudid a lot of times I end up throwing up a few times right after and the marijuana really helps I prefer it over the IV nausea meds I’m persribed.

 

[Painful One]

Oh beautiful girl! You had a Near Death Experience.
I have had one too but it was way more intense than you are describing. Sounds like you stayed real close to your body.
I was completely out of mine and traveled far.
I assure you, there is nothing to fear about death. We have a different home that is so amazing.

Some of my friends and family were and still are absolutely blown away by what I have told them. It made a lot of them believe in God. It made me believe in God. I had considered myself an atheist before that NDE.

We are very special souls. Strong souls.
They (all the doctors and nurses) don’t know how I lived either.
In fact, when I all of a sudden came back and my body all of a sudden normalized, they all stepped back, staring at me in shock.
They were kind of afraid of me for a few. I had a glow, a light coming off me.
I actually talked about my NDE on a radio show and other places.
I can give you a link if you are ever interested in hearing about it.

Your mother lost a child to addiction and possibly a sister too. It is unfortunate that other family members have made it harder for you.
I have had a similar thing happen. I get constant criticism about having to take morphine. They really don’t understand.
How could they? I try to look at the criticism as Love for me. They are worried about us and feel helpless in this situation so they try to “help”. They just don’t have the experience to understand. Someday they will. Just don’t let it bother you. Please.
YOU know the situation.

I sure as heck would NOT tell your doctor about picking the lock. Lol! I have done that before too. When I was home alone and my pain got extreme and I needed to get my medication. The doctors don’t need to know about that. We certainly don’t need more judgement.
We are fighting to live in chronic pain and major illness. Don’t feel bad about this.

No fear my sister. Everything is going to be alright in the end.
I have so much love for you!

Please feel free to contact me if you ever want to talk or need anything. I will respond when I am able.
❤

 

[Painful One]

I tried taking two Kratom pills this morning. My 12 hour MS Contin is still working but I woke up in a lot of pain still.
so I decided to try a few of these and it is definitely increasing the pain relief!
I can almost move enough to get in the shower!!

I decided to get a small supply of Kratom just in case I ran myself low on medication one of these months.
That happens to me every so often. I have been saving them for emergency.

The addition of two Kratom capsules this morning has been a HUGE relief!

Feeling pretty good too!